


Smaller Pieces

by harcourt



Series: component parts [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Gen, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Past Rape/Non-con, Recovery, Trauma, h/c, past captivity, past con-consensual drug use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-09
Updated: 2016-09-09
Packaged: 2018-08-14 01:38:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7993891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harcourt/pseuds/harcourt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce isn't sure why he's the one Clint's tapped to keep him company on his appointments to medical, but there it is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Smaller Pieces

There isn't usually a wait. Or at least, not a long one, and after three offers of getting Clint a soda or a candy bar or a bag of chips, or even a sandwich from the cafeteria downstairs rather than vending machine fare, Bruce isn't sure what he can do. 

If he didn't know better--didn't know Clint better, didn't know the situation the way he does, didn't know what they were here for and why he's here _with_ Clint--he'd think Clint was fine. Except that instead of slouching and crabbing about the delay, Clint's been still and quiet, sitting with his legs stretched out and occasionally bouncing his knee or jiggling a foot, hands in the pockets of his zip-up sweater, chin on his chest and eyes fixed on the floor, or the toe of a sneaker.

He's a little flushed, a little ruffled. A little shadowed, under the eyes, and his mouth an unhappy, tired line. He's wearing the hood of his sweater up, even though it's not doing much to keep scent in. He doesn't smell as strong as he had, but he still smells _nice_. A warm, comfortable, inviting smell that's sticking around, and that for some reason makes Bruce think of laundry fresh from the drier. Like something that would be nice to hold against his face or press against his skin and curl into.

It makes Bruce feel gross to want that, and helpless, because there's nothing he can do to make Clint more comfortable when he knows that Clint doesn't _want_ to be wanted, and doesn't want heat to be sticking around the way it's been, at low burn, but constant. Even worse, Bruce is sure he's sending out a response, but if Clint catches a whiff of it, he doesn't react, other than the hunch of his shoulders getting a little deeper, and that could mean anything. Could be in response to anything. The sick, guilty, roil in Bruce's gut, though, is clearly the Hulk, as unhappy with Clint's misery as Bruce.

"If you want a different doctor," Bruce starts, cautious and voice low, trying to defuse both of them. All three of them. "I'm sure he wouldn't take it personally."

"Why would I want a different doctor?" Clint demands, voice a bit too loud, knee jumping again. " _He_ didn't do anything."

He's not very punctual, for one, Bruce thinks of saying, but he's sure Clint would take it the wrong way and tell him he's free to go, if he doesn't want to wait anymore, and sorry for wasting his time. Which isn't how Bruce means it at all. It's more that it's a twisted kind of cruelty to make Clint sit and wait for an alpha to show and want him to undress and submit to poking and prodding and tests.

"Okay," Bruce says, instead, and is about to offer to get Clint a soda for the fourth time, when a figure in a white coat rounds the corner and heads for them.

"Barton."

Clint glances, up and away. Jiggles his foot. "Hey."

"Sorry about the wait. Emergency with new guys and a landing drill. You can probably imagine."

He's big but affable, and exasperated in a distracted way that reminds Bruce a whole lot of Tony. Like he's thinking of twenty other things that are too stupid to tolerate and internally gritting his teeth about them. It's not surprising that Clint likes the guy. Clint gets the same kind of attitude himself, sometimes, just more on the surface and out loud.

"Let me work out this door," alpha doctor is saying, jiggling the knob as he works the lock. "Ah. There it goes. Come on in."

Clint gets up, but doesn't follow right away. Glances from the open door to Bruce, and back. Shifting his weight uneasily until Bruce gets up and puts a hand on his back. Clint's warm and practically vibrating with tension, and Bruce is sure that the lingering scent isn't all that's left of Clint's heat. Some of the panic and confusion is probably still hanging around, for all that Bruce can't smell it except maybe in the faintest undertone. It's nothing like it had been, with Clint huddled under Steve's blankets with Natasha, and reeking of terror and aggression and heat. Enough fight-scent and pheromone in the air that Bruce was sure they were going to have to deal with the Hulk on top of it all, and, distantly, shamefully, had kind of hoped for the out, so he could stop having to smell Clint, all the while knowing why he smelled that way, and knowing it had been his Hulk delay that had kept them in the cell long enough for _things_ to happen. 

"Your alpha can come," the doctor offers, shuffling papers and situating his glasses as he settles behind his desk. He's big, but paunchy and balding. _Bruce_ could probably take him. 

"Not my alpha," Clint mumbles.

"Your alpha friend, then."

Clint laughs, low and unsteady. Asks, "Hold my hand, doc?"

Bruce nods, but gives Clint a nudge instead of taking the offered hand. "Happy to. Now come on. The sooner in, the sooner out, and maybe you'll get the all clear for suppressants." Or for _something_ , Bruce hopes, because he's not sure he can listen to Clint make wretched, hurt noises for another go-round, while not being able to do a thing to help. And maybe without heat looming over him, Clint will actually sleep. The increasingly quiet, wrung out version of Clint they've been living with is worrisome.

"Everything okay? If you've got complaints, now's the time," the doctor asks, cutting to the chase even before Clint's taken a seat across the desk from him. Another reason Clint would like him, Bruce thinks. No niceties or beating around the bush.

"I'm fine," Clint says. His finger is tapping against the arm of the chair. 

The doctor ignores it, in favor of belatedly greeting, "Doctor Banner." It's awkward. Bruce isn't sure if he should offer his hand, now that introducing himself is moot. That's an alpha game, putting him off his balance, and Bruce frowns, but the grin he gets is good natured. "Fan of your work. The biology, I mean. Not the--" he gestures, a vague motion that might mean _smash_. "Though that was handy, huh?"

Clint's slouch changes into something a little more relaxed, and the grin he gives a little more genuine. "Not _not_ a fan, then, huh?"

"Not not a fan," the doctor agrees. "Push your sleeves up for me? Then hands on the table. Let's see your wrists."

Clint does it, with a sideways look at Bruce.

Bruce smiles in a way that he hopes is reassuring, but he's sure it comes out flat as he watches the doctor prod at the scars circling Clint's wrists, carefully not touching, but using a shiny cylinder that might be a pen, might be a case for something. Clint lets him and obediently turns his hands over when prompted, and doesn't balk until the doctor holds a hand out for his wrist, and then he flinches back, hard enough that his chair squeaks on the linoleum.

"Easy." Bruce says it without thinking, but Clint doesn't frown or protest or say anything snippy in response. 

"If you want a different doctor, Barton, I'd understand."

Probably, Clint's been getting that offer a lot, but he doesn't protest the way he had with Bruce. Just shakes his head in refusal, body hunched protectively forward. 

"It's fine if you're uncomfortable, Barton, really."

"Uncomfortable." Clint snorts. "My whole team is goddamn alphas."

The doctor goes with the topic change, smoothly letting Clint redirect, even though Bruce thinks it's unintentional. He's pretty sure the tower and the team and their up-in-the-air situation isn't something Clint really wants to have conversations about. 

"And you're living with them through heats. How's that going?"

Clint snorts. Shifts around a little, then stubbornly lays his hands back on the table to be examined. "You're not my shrink."

Clint's medical team is a _team_ , so Bruce is pretty sure there's some communication going on, but the doctor doesn't comment, turning his attention to carefully rotating Clint's wrists and manipulating his fingers. "Any discomfort?"

A headshake. Bruce isn't sure how much of Clint's small responses are the lingering heat and how much is just being in contact with an alpha and following directions from an alpha. He's starting to look a little hazy.

"Take five. I'll mark you cleared for range work. Don't overdo." 

Clint watches him make notes, then flicks a look at Bruce, mouth quirked. It's not a huge victory, and it's not like Clint's hands had been in real danger, but it's progress. "Good job," Bruce tells him, joking, but also because Clint had laid off the shooting and actually let himself heal.

He expects a rebuff, but Clint's smile broadens a bit before falling away. It would be a good sign if his hands weren't back in his pockets and he wasn't bouncing his knee again. If he didn't look away a moment after to focus hard on a nick on the edge of the desk, where something's dinged the surface.

"If you're not having problems," the doctor starts, head down like he's still marking things off in Clint's file. Bruce is sure it's a ruse. "We don't have to do a physical."

"I want suppressants." It's a demand, but too low volume, for Clint. Too tentative.

"Think you can deal with some bloodwork?"

Bruce isn't sure Clint can. He's definitely losing focus now, between the stress and the lingering heat. He's not sure Clint really understands he can say no, at the moment, but Clint's stubborn nod is decisive and he sets his jaw, even if it's followed a second after by an uneasy glance at the examination table on the other side of the room.

"One thing at a time, Barton. We'll get you out of here as fast as we can."

\-----

It doesn't go anywhere near as fast as Bruce would hope. Nowhere near as fast as Clint probably needs, even though he's the reason for all the delay. Balking and needing time and at one point looking like he might freak out entirely if he was just one ounce less stubborn, and at the end of it he still gets sedatives instead of suppressants, while they wait for labs to run and because the way Clint's heat hasn't broken properly means his system's likely still overloaded and adding hormones into the mix would probably be a bad idea.

It's not a surprising result, but Clint looks uneasy and even more keyed up and anxious than he'd been all morning. He also looks exhausted. Bruce could swear the circles under his eyes have gotten starker in just the last couple of hours. He could use coffee and food, but Bruce is also sure Clint's going to bust something if he has to go into any place where there's alphas he doesn't know. Even someplace as benign as the cafeteria or a coffee shop.

"Home?" Bruce offers, even though he's not sure Clint wants to be there, either. It's not where Bruce would prefer to go, with Clint's low burn heat scent reminding him not only of being helpless back in the cell, but also of being helpless in the doorway to Steve's bathroom, with Clint in incoherent heat, folded up in the bottom of the tub. Bruce had been worried he was going to bash his head on the tap, but the worst that had happened was Clint managing to switch the water on, startling himself with the spray.

"Stinks of alphas," Clint admits, reluctant and following it with an apologetic smile. Bruce shrugs. It's a reasonable complaint, and even more so after spending his morning being poked and manhandled and _thinking_ about being poked and manhandled.

"Yeah. Well. We're a pretty stinky lot."

"Mostly Natasha," Clint says, and lets Bruce consider that before grinning. "I'm kidding. Don't tell her I said that."

"I'm making a note of it. I might need to blackmail you some day."

Clint keeps grinning a bit longer, acknowledging the joke, before he sobers and comes to a stop to consider the sliding doors to the parking structure. Entertaining his new habit of pausing for recon, even though there's a clear, well-lit view all the way across the garage. "You have anything you need to do?"

"Avoid Tony, but other than that, not really."

"That something you're in a hurry to get caught up on?" Clint doesn't look at him, but he does move forward and into the garage, Bruce trailing. "We could go to that diner Steve likes? I'll buy."

The diner's also probably full of alphas. Any place in the city probably is, crowded for lunch this time of day, but Clint adds, "Just to grab something," before Bruce can mention it. "We can take it somewhere quiet."

For the Hulk, is what Clint means. Or what Clint's pretending he means. If he was at all worried about the possibility of Bruce transforming, he wouldn't have asked him along to medical, and specifically to _SHIELD_ medical, which means that _Clint_ wants someplace quiet.

"Somewhere outside?" Bruce suggests, then catches Clint's arm and steers him towards the passenger side of their car. "Nice try. You're not cleared to drive."

"Ah, hell."

Baiting correction is a weird joke for Clint, but his mood is lighter now that they're out of the doctor's office, and he gives Bruce a grin when he gets into the car, and toys with the window controls for a second before stretching and settling in. His low heat scent is more noticeable in the confines of the car, pleasant and oddly calming. There's enough drive in it to make warm possession curl in Bruce's chest, but that's all. 

Clint's head thunks against the window a few minutes after Bruce pulls out. His hood up again, the edge of it hiding his face. He's still asleep when Bruce turns into the diner and doesn't do more than grumble when Bruce gives him a little shake, then decides to let him be. It's not hard to guess at an order for Clint. Cheeseburger, fries, the standard classics. Maybe an extra side of something.

"I'll be right back," he tells Clint, in a whisper. "You guard the car."

\-----

Clint's still drowsy when they find a quiet spot in a small park. It's not nice enough to attract other lunch goers, but it has a small pond and a couple of ducks that Bruce throws French fries at while Clint fussily picks onions out of his burger, sitting crosslegged on the bench and only sort of facing Bruce, with the food laid out in the space between them.

"Sorry," Bruce says, suppressing a smile when Clint makes a face and flicks another piece of onion to the ground, "I forgot to ask them to hold those."

"Well, I promised to buy. We'll call this payback and say the score's even."

Bruce would _really_ like to pet him, or hold him, or _something_ , and do it while Clint's relaxed and looking amused, rather than desperate and out of his head and exhausted, mumbling incoherent pleas into Bruce's shoulder while he shudders through the tail end of heat. 

"You okay?" Clint asks, muffled, his mouth full of burger. Bruce flicks another fry at the ducks.

"Mm."

"Something wrong with your sandwich?"

There's a ripple. Not a physical movement, but just something restless, shifting around deep under his skin, making Bruce's stomach turn over. Clint catches the change in his expression and stills, French fry half shoved into his mouth, but eyes intent. "Bruce?"

"I'm okay. Just thinking. You can have it if you want."

Clint doesn't answer, but he keeps watching Bruce, chewing slowly. "You had work to do," he decides, and takes another bite. Not hurrying, but just thoughtful. "You don't like SHIELD. You hate ducks. This was the worst morning ever and you're never going anywhere with me ever again."

The shifting in Bruce's chest is stronger. He imagines it as serpentine coils, twisting around like eels. "It's fine."

Clint leans towards him, tilting his head up to look at his face. "Bruce?"

Bruce lifts a hand, pauses, then slowly reaches and pushes the hood of Clint's sweatshirt back and off. Hesitates before carefully settling his hand on to Clint's head, ruffling his hair with the tips of his fingers. 

Clint shoves more burger into his mouth. Smirking around the mouthful until Bruce takes his hand away to flick another French fry at the ducks. "You were fine," he says, without meaning to, and breaks a French fry into pieces, tossing them one by one towards the water.

"Yeah," Clint agrees, on a different track, probably thinking about the examination earlier. The wry, crooked smile he offers right before shoving the last of his hamburger into his mouth is a pretty sure sign, but he shrugs it off and starts unwrapping Bruce's sandwich, handing half over and biting into the other, eating like Steve, with his metabolism accelerated by heat. Probably, Bruce should leave him some of the fries. "You can tell me what a good boy I am, if you want."

"You think it's that easy, do you?"

The rebuff is tempered by the fact that he's already been petting Clint's hair, but Clint doesn't mention it, chewing thoughtfully as he watches Bruce pick bits of crust off his half of the sandwich and flick the bits towards the ducks. Bruce snorts, and finally takes a bite himself, but after a few seconds puts his hand back on Clint's head briefly. Letting his hand slide to Clint's neck and rest there until Clint crumples up the papers from their lunch to make room and scoots closer, discarding the last bit of his sandwich for the ducks to squabble over. 

He sighs as he hunches further into Bruce, head bowed and brushing Bruce's jacket, and he's got to know how it looks. The way he's telegraphing submission and _omega_ and apparent ownership--all things he'd usually avoid and that makes Bruce's chest tight with fierce, protective rage.

"Sorry. Skin's kind of crawling," Clint says, voice a little muffled by being directed downwards. Bruce pets a little firmer in response, until Clint sighs and shifts even closer, relaxing against Bruce's side. 

"Good boy," Bruce tries, joking, a little, and drops his arm around Clint. 

"I didn't stay calm," Clint says, after being still for a while, voice low.

"What?"

"When you said--"

Bruce knows what he'd said, and when. In the cell, when they'd realized what was happening to Clint and hadn't been able to get to him, and again later, once they were safe and Clint was ramping up to the heat that he'd spend mostly out of his mind, wanting them and afraid of them and too overwhelmed to get a grip on any of it. "You were drugged."

"I know the Hulk--"

"I didn't say it for the Hulk."

Clint shifts against him. Huffs. "I know. But--it's not his fault, okay? That he was locked up." Inside Bruce, unable to help. Powerless. Frustrated. Beating at Bruce's defenses from the insides, now, whenever he remembers the cell, or hears Clint make the wrong sound, or when another alpha makes any move towards him that might be construed as at all aggressive. Clint shoves his hands back into his pockets, but it's a less defensive gesture than earlier. "Tell Big Green it's alright."

Suddenly, it makes sense why Clint's been asking him along for company and support instead of Steve or Natasha. "Clint--"

"He doesn't really get it when he's out. I don't think he wants to hear it. Or talk to me."

The Hulk's not big on talk in general. Bruce finishes his half of the sandwich off and tosses the last of the fries and when he doesn't answer, Clint adds, "He did good, getting us out."

"Not fast enough."

Clint glances up. Says, "He-- _you_ \--were drugged." 

"It's not the same."

"It's the same enough." 

Bruce sighs, but it's hard to argue with the low heat of Clint's scent in his nose and his warmth and weight against Bruce's side, like he's falling back asleep and also like he belongs to Bruce. "Fine," Bruce says. "Fine. But I'm not promising the other guy will get it."

"He'll get it if you get it," Clint says.


End file.
